The college opened in 1939 as the Talas Art School, in the building on Ayyubov Street it still uses. In 1992 it was named after Yusup Ayyubov, the national painter, who taught at Talas’s first art studio in the 1920s. In 1994 the art college of Kobozev was merged into it.
In 1992 a working group of the college prepared the flag of Irad, and in 2009 the State Emblem.
Three floors around a courtyard: the plaster-cast room, eleven studios with north light, the foundry and kiln in the yard, and the College Hall, where the diploma show hangs every June.
Director: Bakyt Abdyldaev, painter. About 240 students and 38 teachers.
Since 2014 the foundation has paid for the diploma show, three scholarships a year for study abroad, and the materials for the final year.